Peace, Healing & Happiness

Menu

Category Archives: Spiritual Gifts

Is depression simply a disease as many psychiatrists and doctors would have us believe, or is there tremendous potential for personal growth and spiritual awakening locked up in the struggle against this common ‘disorder?’

For those who are battling, or who have already conquered depression, there is certainly no one size fits all answer, but, according to one of the world’s foremost experts on the relative study of mind and spirit, Dr. Lisa Miller, severe depression and spiritual experience are two sides of the same cognitive coin.

Her idea is perhaps best presented with this metaphor: depression and spiritual awakening are two sides of the same door. On one side is the total possibility of despair, hopelessness and isolation, and a look through to the other side reveals equally strong shades of spiritual satisfaction, inner peace, and connection to all that is.

Personally driven by her own despair and depression that resulted from infertility and a lack of being able to find her and her husband’s lives worth living without their own children, she began, ever so slowly to awaken to the messages of healers and helpers that seemed to arise serendipitously on her path, offering hints at greater possibilities for happiness and fulfillment.

Slow at first, her rise in awareness of how the universe was speaking to her through others quickly gave way to a flood of synchronicity, events that were simply far too meaningful to be described as coincidence. Synchronicity, remarkably, is one of the most important and commonly shared experiences or features of the process of human awakening, and individuation onto the soul’s proper path.

The synchronistic events in her life ultimately gave way to a letting go of sorts, a submission to new possibilities, a release, if you will, of previously held notions of what she thought happiness was supposed to be or to mean in her life.

As a researcher and professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, Lisa ended up in a position of critical curiosity about the nature of depression: is it a disease or not? If so, how can a disease be caused by emotionally charged events in one’s life, such as the loss of a family member, or in her case, the lack of being able to create a family?

The causal link simply did not fully add up, thus she applied her skills as a scientist to the matter and came upon a significant discovery about how the brain is physically constructed with regards to its disposition of being in a depressed or spiritually connected state. For in her eyes, these two concepts seem to mirror each other philosophically, so why not scientifically?

Researching this with her team at Colombia, they discovered that yes, indeed, the actual substance of the brain where depression and spiritual fulfillment are registered are remarkably different with each of these states, reflecting a genuine physical polarity to accompany the metaphysical connection. The study began by recruiting some of the most depressed people she could find, especially those with a long family history of crippling depression, then looking at people with equally long lineages of spiritual presence.

They realized that the subjects all had a similar condition in the cortex region of the brain, and in the case of the depressed participants, the brain’s cortex was literally withered and underdeveloped, as though it had been starved. Similar to how a plant reacts to insufficient water.

Conversely, when looking at spiritually awakened subjects, those with a rich history of happiness and feeling connected to physical and spiritual realms of our multidimensional existence, these same regions of the brain were markedly stronger, more robust and larger, looking like the broad trunks of healthy trees.

“What we found, was that in precisely those regions of the brain which atrophied and withered in lifelong depression, for those people with strong personal spirituality, there was thickening of those very same regions. The cortex was thick, as if you were looking at a tree in the Amazon, versus a tree withering in the cold and drought.

Depression is not always an illness. It can be… but very often, depression, as every one will face it, is core to our endowment and core to our development.” – Dr. Lisa Miller

Another fascinating thing that they found, indicating what clinical science can show about the spiritual path, is when they looked at women who, “through suffering had come to a spiritual path, with nice thick cortexes, they also had another quality. The back of their head gave off a certain wavelength of energy that we call alpha, and its also found on the back of the head of a meditating monk.”

Of the possible frequencies that the human brain can naturally operate under, such as alpha, beta, delta and gamma, alpha is the same frequency as the Schumann resonance, the known frequency given off by the earth. In other words, those on the spiritual path, with healthy and vibrant brain cortexes, are operating at the same frequency of our home, the earth.

Final Thoughts

This information can uplift many of the millions of people struggling though depression and looking for some hope to find their way out of the isolation, despair and darkness of this common condition. The more deeply a person feels depression, the greater the possibility for spiritual awakening that sets a person firmly on the spiritual path.

“The world is alive and infused with that sacred field we might measure as high amplitude alpha. Knowing this, we live into an inspired life. All life of meaning that is not one that we create, but one that is truly in the fabric of the world. We live an inspired life.” – Lisa Miller

Take a listen to Dr. Miller’s beautiful and uplifting story. At the very end she reveals an incredible even that adds even more to this story of synchronicity and inspiration.

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle.

Enlightened Tibetan masters return as recognized “tulkus” – reincarnated buddhas. In the 1970s, tulkus began to be born in the West, confusing both the Tibetan system and the lives of the Western children involved.

Rethinking Madness

A documentary film by Phil Borges on approaches to psychosis in different traditional cultures. CRAZYWISE reveals a paradigm shift challenging the way Western culture defines and treats “mental illness”. The documentary introduces patients, survivors and activists in a growing movement demanding more choices for recovery.

On December 11th 2015, the second edition of the Crazywise seminar will take place in Rotterdam. Sociologists, psychiatrists, psychologists and people with lived experience will bring a complementary perspective on psychosis as it is treated and defined today. A special emphasis is put on the idea of wisdom in crazyness, sense in madness.

Decades of medical research on psychosis have given us a medical treatment that brings relief to many patients experiencing psychosis. For a considerable group of patients though, this remedy seems to be insufficient and a minority of (ex) patients seems to be able to lead stable and fulfilling lives, without the help of medication. The psychotic experience and psychiatric practice bring up questions to which scientific researchers are yet to find the answers.

Crazywise 2015 will offer a stage to speakers from Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and the US from a diverse range of fields: psychiatry, psychology, sociology, advocacy and lived experience. The seminar will explore new approaches and alternative treatment methods and aims to inspire new research and a more effective practice. It’s perspective is not to be considered antipsychiatric, but offers a platform to those who wish to look for additional explanations, nuance and solutions in an open minded and constructive dialogue.

This seminar is an initiative of mental health care professionals and people with lived experience which gratefully borrowed the name of a documentary film by Phil Borges on approaches to psychosis in different traditional cultures.